


A Knight's Favor

by AceQueenKing



Category: Suikoden III
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-02-02
Updated: 2016-02-02
Packaged: 2018-05-17 18:33:02
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,160
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5881243
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/AceQueenKing/pseuds/AceQueenKing
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Salome gives Chris a gift before heading out to war.</p>
            </blockquote>





	A Knight's Favor

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Quicksilver_ink](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Quicksilver_ink/gifts).



It was a cold day. Bitter. Chris looked blearily into the cold darkness outside the window and purposefully ignored it, turning back toward her husband. Rain. She had been woken by the rain. It seemed almost appropriate, the sound of urgent drops hitting their windows: a merciless and quick _clang-clang-clang_ against the windowpane. A perfect day, she thought, to go to war.

She shivered, not wanting to think about that just yet, and moved closer to Salome. He was not quite-awake, but he adjusted for her – he was as always: warm, sweet, obliging. His knotted hands moved to stroke her hair.

“It's not morning yet,” she muttered. Salome ignored her grumbling, instead just stroking her hair in the gentle caress he had mastered over the past fifty years.

Fifty years, she thought, hadn't been enough time. She opened her mouth, trying to say _you can go back to sleep, it's all right_ , but her voice got caught in her throat.

“I know,” he said, his voice slow and sleepy. Salome took longer to wake up, these days – and she tried not to think about that. It was one of the many things she has trained herself not to think about over the years: the wrinkles he had that she never would, the silver hair earned by age, not genetics. There were mornings she still expected to wake up and see his golden hair spread across the pillows, only to turn and remember all the time that had passed. 

It was early, for them both, but neither of them wanted to miss a second of the few hours they had left together. She knew it was selfish to want to spend the time with him – Salome needed his rest – but couldn't bring herself to voice her concerns.

Instead, she lay on his chest, savoring the moment. His heartbeat was steady to her ear; the same familiar, reassuring song she had listened to for the past fifty years. She closed her eyes and listened to it, the steady beat comforting in its closeness.

They lay like that for a bit of time, his hands caressing her side. She felt herself begin to drift off, then stopped herself – _no_ , now was not the time for sleep. Now, for the last time in a long time, it was time for Salome. She moved upwards, leaning on his shoulder as her unblemished fingers lightly trace his throat. 

He swallowed.

“Chris,” he whispered, his voice hoarse, but whatever he was going to say was drowned out by her kiss.  
.  
They had never been the type of couple to make love in the morning, but for once she allowed herself the selfish pursuit of pleasure despite there being work to be done. She was content to bury herself in the act, memorizing each detail of his body in turn. She focused first on his hands: still firm, pressing urgently on her hips. His ring, slightly cool to the touch at first, then heating up against her skin as they moved. His face: intelligent, well-lined eyes meeting her own as he took in her unlined face, her still-nubile body with his jaw set hard, concentrating on her. Perhaps Salome was memorizing details, too. Her heart ached at the way he quietly gasped as he arched into her; she couldn’t help but feel guilty for taking some of his energy, but she couldn’t bear tempering her passion.

 _Give me_ _one last_ _child_ , she thought, kissing him fiercely. _Give me a son or a daughter._ _Give me another baby. Give me something to remember – give me something to come home soon for._ _Give me something of you to hold onto when you're not—_

Her thoughts were interrupted when his hand pressed lower.  
  
“Salome...” she whispered, pressing her face to his neck, his soft gasps echoing in her ear.

“I know,” he said, his touch warm and heady and sweet in all the ways that made her ache. “I know.”  
  
She said nothing after that, taken beyond words by Salome's skilled hands. Odd, she thought, how a man who spent his entire life wielding a mace could be so devastatingly gentle. She gasped and shivered, but Salome held her steady.

She squeezed him tight, her fingers digging into his shoulders as she felt herself fall into orgasm. Her lips found his, and seconds later she was taking him with her.

Neither moved much after; Salome stroked her shoulder, she ran a hand over his waist. Neither of them wanted to say anything – or do anything – to advance the merciless clock.

But light slowly overtook the rain.

Chris sighed.

“Chris,” he said, stirring. “It's time.”  
  
“I know.” She turned away from him, her eyes burning with tears she did not want to let fall.

By the time she had collected herself enough to turn back, Salome was putting on his breeches. Her eyes didn't miss the way his fingers struggled with closing them – but she added that to the list of things she pretended not to notice.

He looked up at her, a sad smile on his face. “I do not suppose you remember where I put the mace?”  
  
“You cannot come,” she said, all the sadder for it. This was to be her first war without him, and she would miss his council. And his company. “Zexen would fall to pieces without you.”

She grabbed his hand and held it for a moment, rubbing his stiff knuckles with her fingers. She felt her stomach plunge, thinking of all the days this war would rob them of. She tried very hard not to estimate how many were left.   
  
She could only hope that it would be a quick war.  
  
“And yet, my lady, I find the same may be true regardless of whether or not I am here.” He reached up and brushed her cheek. “Certainly Vinay del Zexay will seem lesser without you.”  
  
“It will be harder in Tinto without you. Essie Gallant's good with an axe, and she's a good strategist, but not as good as...” She swallowed the large knot in her throat and did what she always did in moments of difficulty: her duty. She laid out her armor before Salome could see the tears that burnt at the edge of her eyes. But Salome was, as usual, good at predicting her moods: she had not even finished pulling out the first piece before she heard the echo of his footsteps, and then felt his arms curl around her middle.

“I feel I have failed you,” he whispered softly, brushing back her hair. “And I am very sorry for that.”

She placed the hand with the rune upon it on his skin, felt it throb – and winced.  
  
The rune was but a powerful reminder that their time was finite, even if hers was not. 

“I’m the one to have failed you.” She sighed. “I should have retired, when—”  
  
“No.” His arms stayed tight, reassuringly strong. “You would never forgive yourself, my lady, if you retired when you could still fight.”  
  
“I cannot be the captain immortal. Even my father once said that old heroes should die eventually.” She wondered, now, if her then-mortality is what had driven her father away: perhaps her first birthday cake and drooling smile had reminded Wyatt Lightfellow that he would one day outlive his daughter. He had claimed to love her mother and herself, but Chris knew now that when Wyatt had left Zexen for that last Glorious War, he had no intention of ever seeing either of them again. _Coward_ , she thought, ignoring the pain that still itched deep within long-healed scars. She thought of her children, now full-grown, and knew she could never fly to the Grasslands to forget them the way her father had. He had shed Wyatt Lightfellow and emerged Jimba as easily as a snake shed its skin.

“Well, I am thankful that you did not choose to go into the grasslands to start a new life.” 

“I do not think I would be much welcome in Karaya.” She wrinkled her nose. She and Lady Lucia had disagreed on many issues, and her father was but one of them. She would never understand how Lady Lucia could look at Jimba and think him a good man. Did she not have a son of her own? Did she not know the ache that came from a missing parent?

“I rather thought that you would go to Alma Kinan myself,” Salome said. She straightened reflexively; even this many years later, the mention of Alma Kinan sent her back to that moment. She did not think the memory of Yun's sacrifice would ever leave her. She still remembered her last moments with crystal clarity; she still saw the shadow of her in the rune's dreams and she knew that their fates were irrevocably bound to one another. Her stomach twisted as if a knife had been plunged in her long-held guilt.  
  
For all that she had enjoyed the last few decades of her life, they were half-stolen ones, ones she had lived when an innocent girl died.

And the fact that Yun had gone to her death so willingly was hardly a comfort.

Salome, perhaps, realized why she froze; his arms tightened around her gently in soft apology. She leaned into his touch, and he pressed a soft kiss to his head.  
  
“I apologize,” he said, his voice a quiet whisper. “I am an old man, and I forget.”  
  
It was, oddly, something she would never experience.

“It's fine,” she said, giving him a small smile. She didn't want to spoil the few minutes they had left together; there would be no time for breakfast, not when she had to be among the first to arrive at the barracks. It was a captain's job to take command, to look into the eyes of so many ever-younger men and women and inspire them to fight for her, and, if need be, to die for her.

And so many of them, she knew, would never be coming home. Their eternal rest will be in the Tinto mountains; in Crom, in Tigermouth, in the hellish mines that ran under the cities. 

Hers would come only after she relinquished the rune. And if she relinquished it, it would -- it would -- 

 _The rune may have had a hand in your creation_ , Salome's voice whispered, oddly youthful if still dour. She shivered. No. She would never let the immortal rune touch her children,never,not her children nor her grandchildren nor their children's children's children. 

Salome let his palms linger around her waist as he knelt, before grabbing her greaves and helping her fasten them. He struggled with fastening them. She watched the frown on his face as the metal grooves slipped through his crooked fingers—not once, but twice – before smiling in victory as he clasped the latch.

Twenty years ago, it had taken him perhaps a minute or two to help with her armor. Now it took fifteen, twenty – but she found it hard to mind. He winced as he handed her his cuisses. She hooked the belt around her waist. Salome pressed the heavy armor to her thigh, making it easier for her to put it together, tying the heavy metal traps expertly.

They continued the routine silently – vambrace, couter, rearbrace -- then it was time to fit her gauntlets. She cringed at the view of them, metal and cold and silent. Once she put them on, it would be months – perhaps years – before she could feel Salome's fingers entangled with her own. She did not allow herself to believe that it could be the last time she held Salome; that pain was too alien, too unknowable.

Instead, she held onto the moment, squeezing his hands and kissing him.

“I shall miss you greatly,” he said, his voice hoarse and raw. She ached for him as much as herself: Salome did not have the luxury of an eternal wait. Every day the Tinto war continued would be yet one more that she would not be able to spend with him.

And were they not an age when every day was precious?

“You'll keep busy,” she deflected, trying to keep her thoughts on her duty as she slide her fingers into the cold grip of the gauntlets. “You always do.”  
  
He nodded, swallowed. He said nothing, but he did not break eye contact; his eyes searched her face, and she wondered whether he, too, was memorizing as much as he could before the war took her away. She took a deep breath. Her captain's skirt went on next, what Percival once dubbed their ‘Confederate Bunting’, before he’d decided to become a farmer in Iksay.

Last she had seen of him, Percival had seven daughters and sixteen acres of land. He also had a magnificent beard, one that had grown thicker as the hair on his head had thinned. Would one of his children be a squire now? She did not know. She would look for the name Fraulein on her rosters -- and if the time came that one of them would be laid down in the cold mire of Tinto's mines, she knew she would be the one writing that letter home. 

“How do I look?” she asked, raising her arms. Salome had always had a good eye for armor.

Salome smoothed over the flyaways in her hair, stroking it gently as he stared at her. Chris, the Silver Haired Maiden; Chris, the Fire-Demon of Karaya. She had not changed a bit in the last fifty years, and they both knew it.

“Almost perfect,” he whispered, his voice gravely and soft. “I can think of one thing to make it better, though.”  
  
She raised an eyebrow as Salome slowly lumbered to their closet, his silver hair disappearing as he dug deep through an old chest. He emerged with a scarf, red and bright and vivid. Her breath caught in her throat as he held it out to her.

“Salome...” she breathed softly, holding out her hand. She had always associated it with him; it seemed hard to fathom it being on _her_ and not on _him._ It was his father's scarf before his. She remembered Lucas Harras, but only dimly: an old man with a long beard and a scarf in the bright red of his house, one that fluttered in the wind as he talked to her mother. When Lucas had passed, Salome had taken up the mantle. He had worn it for as long as she could remember seeing him: it was upon his shoulders the day they first met, and she remembered it for the way he'd kept stoically calm even as it flapped about in the wind. It had become useful as a means to identify him in the midst of battle – his red scarf a cool contrast to the dark soot in the barely burning embers of Karaya, then a welcome and sore sight in the too-blue ruins of the Sindar.  
  
“I believe this is yours, my lady,” he said, thumbing the soft embroidery on the edges – purple on red thread, House Harras colors. She traced the edge of it – where the thin embroidery had become thick, choked with knots. She remembered it ripping once, off some tree in the Grasslands, and her struggle at trying to repair it with the tools they had at hand. Louis had cracked a joke that she would never marry with sewing skills as wretched as hers, and she remembered how her breath had caught, and how Salome had laid his hand on hers. She remembered how he had looked at her, eyes full of love, and said that some men had valued a good hand with a sword far more than one with a needle. She was certain Leo had made a joke then, but she had never remembered what it was, because that was the moment when she had realized, abruptly, that she had wanted to be Salome's _wife_.

 It had been around his neck on the day they had married, too, and she could remember quite clearly the way it had fluttered past her cheek as they had kissed in the church, and Louis had let out a very loud _whoop_ as their lips had touched under the image of Saint Loa. Thankfully, the scarf had hidden her small smile, but she remembered the way Salome's lips had curved and she had known, eyes clothed, that he was hiding a grin as well.

Louis, of course, was now Vice Captain of the border patrol and was well old enough to look the part. Still, every time she thought of him, she thought of a fourteen-year-old boy in the Sindar Ruins, brave in the face of unknowable odds. Would Louis be on the march now? She did not know. She wondered if he would see the scarf around her neck, and wonder if perhaps, Salome had...

“I cannot take this.” She pushed away from the idea. _No._ She could not take something that was so integrally his; could not bear to see the look of pity in Louis' eyes and know that it was only a matter of time until such feelings were warranted. She tried to hand it back, her gauntlets shaking.

“Do not refuse a knight's favor, my lady,” Salome said, putting his hands over hers. “It was given freely, and I will take comfort in knowing it is with you.”  
  
She said nothing, still shaking. She ran a finger over the scarf, contemplating the lines of it, the spots of sloppy stitching where war and age had torn it.

“I'm not prepared...” She shook her head, her throat shutting far too fast to let the emotion squeeze out. “I mean, this cannot replace...” Her fingers clutched at the fabric as words failed her.  
  
Recognition dawned in his eyes. Salome took it back from her, and she looked up, startled, as he draped it into a small band at her arm, tucking the ends of it into a small band. 

“If you like, you may return it after the war, my lady. Even St. Loa allowed herself the favor of her knight.”

She brushed the band he had fashioned out of the scarf with her fingers; it felt the same, but looked different. Perhaps that was enough, enough to allow her to carry a piece of him without people wondering when, exactly, that would be the only thing left of him.

“I cannot accompany you to war,” he whispered slowly, pressing a kiss to her forehead in mute apology. “But I would feel better if some part of my House was in Tinto with you.”  
  
She nodded slowly, touching the band. “I will return it to you after the war,” she said, and prayed that he would be there. She would fight to keep Zexen safe, and Salome with it.

“It's a promise,” he whispered, pressing a kiss to her cheek.

**Author's Note:**

> You motivated me to ship this pairing like burning over a decade ago. I can only hope that you enjoyed this take on it. Many thanks to you for all your lovely fics. 
> 
> Thanks to Buhnebeest for the beta read.


End file.
